Blowin’ in the Wind: Mary Oliver -- “My Work is Loving the World”

("Blowin’ in the Wind" is a periodic feature on my blog containing an assortment of nature writings – songs, excerpts, poems, prayers, Bible readings or other things – pieces I haven’t written but that inspire me or give me joy. I trust they’ll do the same for you.)

I want to share with you today a poem from one of my favorites, Mary Oliver. My sister-in-law Beth recommended her to me one time when I was visiting her and my brother’s home. And what do you know? There just happened to be a book of Oliver’s poetry there at the bedstand in their guest bedroom. Once I found that my hosts went to bed a lot earlier than me, it gave me plenty of opportunity that visit to spend some time with her writing. 

Mary Oliver was an American poet who died in 2019. A Pulitzer Prize winner for her 1983 American Primitive, much of her work has a natural bent to it, which is what attracts me to it. Some of her critics call her too accessible, but to me, that is hardly a criticism but a compliment. When it comes to poetry, I need accessibility! Though not a woman of declared religion, I find not infrequent references to the divine or sacred in her work, which is welcome to me as a person of faith. Having written twenty books of poetry and six of prose, her collection Devotions is a compilation of many favorites written over a fifty year span from the 60’s to the twenty-tens, and would be a great place for new readers to begin.

The poem I share here is titled “Messenger” from her 2006 collection Thirst. Her life-long habit of solitary walks, and the place these played in her inspiration, may easily be imagined.

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird--

equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

 

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters…

 

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

The robin, the rosehips.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing,

since all the ingredients are here,

 

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever.

What are three of the important things that matter? Not only in natural observation but in life? Astonishment, joy and gratitude, she says. These not only build a life but call us deeper into creation care, because we care for the things we love. 

My work is loving the world. Not a bad gig. Sounds like Jesus.

~~ RGM, February 29 2024

From My Nature Journal: When I Get to Heaven

When I get to heaven, tell me there will still be woods,

          Where a sauntered pace

          May be had without needing to keep

          One’s bearings of time or space,

          Forests with birds and creatures

          And bits of splendor that take breath away:

          Spring Beauties and Forget-Me-Nots,

          Summer’s ferns and fungus,

          Autumn leaves that crackle afoot

          Belying midwinter’s absurd stillness;

          And, yes, one with whom to walk who enjoys it as I, or as You.

I do love the woods.

When I get to heaven, tell me there will still be canoes,

          That skim cold, pristine lakes,

          Leaving wakes

          That last not long,

          By quiet stroke and firm hand

          Easing gently over mirror calm,

          Or bobbing swell and wave

          Into bright, hidden bays

          Where eagles nest and loons dive,

          Or sliding into dark, night water

          Silver by moonshine all the way to rocky shore.

I do love canoes.

When I get to heaven, tell me there will still be seasons,

          When color palates fly -- 

          January’s blazing whites,

          Lupine’s spring, a rainbow’s July,

          Aspen’s or maple’s fall,

          Living greens, waning yellows, dying reds,

          Late summer suns whose early setting

          Have always made me sad

          These things have to end,

          Like winter hearth-fires that blaze like those suns

          But then look so cold when the morning comes.

I do love seasons.

And if there be foolishness in me

For laying such earthly hope upon heaven’s landscape,

Have mercy on me, Lord:

I love this world you made.

It’s what I know.

(Endnote: I saw the rough idea for this poem many years ago, anonymously cited, so it’s not completely original to me. But at that time, I added significantly to it and adapted it so extensively that I cannot now recall what was original and what is mine. To this day, though, I am still unable to come up with a source, so if any part of it sounds familiar to you and you can set me straight, I’d appreciate you letting me know so I may give credit appropriately. Thanks.)

~~ RGM, October 31 2015

From My Nature Journal: I-Thou

I do not often try my hand at poetry, perhaps once in a blue moon. OK, OK, perhaps once in several blue moons. (Permit me to digress. Do you know what a blue moon actually is? Some call the monthly new moon a blue moon; though it may seem ‘blue’ as the night sky to us at that time, new moon is simply the time our natural satellite lies roughly between the earth and sun in its twenty-nine day earth orbit, and from our vantage point does not reflect sunlight. But a blue moon? Other common thought is that a blue moon is the second full moon in the same calendar month, an errant definition given by a popular science magazine in the mid-20^th Century. But it gets much more interesting than that: the historic definition of blue moon is actually the third moon in a single season that contained four full moons. At a time when people counted agricultural and animal migration seasons by lunar cycles, it stands to reason that a moon cycle of twenty-nine days did not neatly fit into the actual 365-day, twelve-month calendar year; keeping an annual calendar by twelve lunar cycles would throw seasonal anticipations significantly off in a very short time. Simple people had to make allowances for this. The annual clock could more easily be reset by solar time; but occasionally there had to be a ‘betrayer’ moon in a season that needed to be disregarded in order to get critical timing correct upon which life provision would depend. An early word for betrayer was ‘belewe.’ Whichever of these last two definitions we use, with a moon’s twenty-nine day cycle compared to thirty and thirty-one day calendar months, ‘belewe moons’ happen on average once every 2¾ years.)

So, as I was saying before my short attention span took control, writing poetry is not my forte (and maybe that's why poetry is not my forte...). But I once read in an old spiritual classic the line -- I the brook, thou the spring -- and determined at some point to give greater thought to that idea. Was it a Rainer Maria Rilke line? I cannot recall. But here is what resulted, not all nature images to be sure, but enough to be appropriate to my nature blog.

I the brook, Thou the Spring

I the journey, Thou the Path

I the known, Thou the Mystery

I the warmed, Thou the Fire

I the spoken, Thou the Word

I the seen, Thou the Seer

I the leaf, Thou the Root

I the breath, Thou the Life

I the sound, Thou the Source

I the beam, Thou the Light

I the borne, Thou the Bearer

I the grateful, Thou the praised

I the sail, Thou the Wind

I the vessel, Thou the Filling

I the thought, Thou the Mind

I the clay, Thou the Hand

I the wing, Thou the Lift

I the moment, Thou the Ever

I the lantern, Thou the Oil

I the deed, Thou the Will

I the image, Thou the Artist

I the breaker, Thou the Tide

I the held, Thou the Holder

I the mite, Thou the Expanse

I the fruit, Thou the Vine

I the cherished, Thou the Love

I the act, Thou the Force

I the gleam, Thou the Gem

I the protected, Thou the Shelter

I the eye, Thou the Vision

I the sustained, Thou the Food

I the chased, Thou the Pursuer

I the object, Thou the Subject

I the void, Thou the Fullness

I the faint, Thou the Strength

I the question, Thou the Answer

~RGM, from an earlier entry

in my nature journal

QOTM...*: John Greenleaf Whittier

(*Quote of the Month)

It has been a lengthy cold snap here in Colorado, longer than is typical, two weeks without seeing a nice fifty-degree warmup. Family members in Chicago, Minneapolis and Seattle have seemed to suffer worse than I, however, and it seems the ones who have had it the easiest this winter, relatively speaking, are my daughter and son-in-law's family in Alaska! So it all has caused the snatch of poetry that follows to stand out strongly: 

The moon above the eastern wood

Shone at its full; the hill range stood

Transfigured in the silver flood,

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen,

Dead white, save where some sharp ravine

Took shadow, or the somber green

Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black

Against the whiteness at their back.

For such a world and such a night

Most fitting that unwarming light,

Which only seemed where’er it fell

To make the coldness visible.

                                        ~~ John Greenleaf Whittier

Now having shared this, though, I have to confess: I am very sorry to say it, but poetry does not often turn me on. And I suppose the more complicated the poetry, the more quickly I lose interest, like, perhaps maybe, within nanoseconds. I have always wanted to love poetry more. Even to sit down with so fine a volume as Wendell Berry’s A Timbered Choir always sounds more inviting than it ends up being to me. I regret this very much, as some of the most wonderful people I know read it, write it, speak it and think it. I wish this were I.

(all photography by Rick and Gail Mylander)

Consequently, quotes from poetry masters will likely not often grace these blogposts. And though I’m not remembering where I came across this excerpt from American Transcendentalist poet John Greenleaf Whittier, this brief passage has the effect of nearly translating me to the edge of a winter forest at night, almost even feeling the piercing cold of the wind through my overcoat. It’s from a piece called Snow-Bound, published in 1866, and chronicles a memory the author had of his family holed up in their warm home during a blizzard.

Not a poetry reader? Then try this: read it through twice, silently and very slowly. Then read it aloud even more slowly, pausing not at the ends of lines but at the punctuation marks. See if this kind of read-through doesn’t cause you to visually enter the scene, maybe even make you want to pull your collar up just a little bit around your neck.

The tempest comes out from its chamber, the cold from the driving winds. By the breath of God ice is given, and the broad waters become frozen. (Job 37:9-10)

~~RGM, February 5, 2014